South Korea ‘s capital city, Seoul, is a city where green parks, mountains and ancient temples break up the concrete...

Five famous foods in Japan

Japan is considered as a culinary wonderland thanks to incomparable uniqueness, a national obsession with cuisine and an almost religious embrace of freshness and productive perfection. The result is the following 5 edible treasures that we can never get enough of.

Sushi in Japan

Sushi is one of Japan’s greatest gastronomical gifts to the world without any doubt. Almost poetic in its simplicity, good sushi relies on two things: the freshness of the ingredients and the knife skills of the chef. Whether you like your raw fish draped over bite-sized balls of vinegared rice, rolled up in toasted nori seaweed or pressed into fat rectangular logs, delicious sushi can be found in every price range.

Sushi

Gindara saikyo-yaki

Lovingly slow-grilled over hot coals, the perfect gindara saikyo-yaki is flaky, moist, suggestively sweet and irresistibly savory at the same time. Black cod is in itself a thing of beauty, but marinating it in mellow white miso brings out a buttery richness that’s hard to describe — and even harder to stop eating. The Japanese originally developed this technique in order to preserve fish before the invention of refrigeration. Those days are long gone, but our love for saikyo-yaki endures.

Gindara Saikyo-Yaki

Warabi mochi

Wiggly, jiggly, sweet and cool to the touch, warabi mochi is a lot like Jell-o, except much, much better. Technically, ‘mochi’ is a bit of a misnomer: Warabi mochi is made not from rice, but bracken fern starch. The result is custardy, translucent, and delicious rolled in toasty kinako soybean flour.

Umi-budo

Shimmering like tiny jewels in shades of green that range from pale jade to deep moss, umi-budo are a delight to behold. These miniature ‘sea grapes’ are not grapes at all, but clusters of an extraordinary sea vegetable found in Okinawa. When you bite into them, the turgid little capsules pop in your mouth, offering a satisfying crunch before releasing their briny goodness across your palate.

Umi-budo

Ramen

More books, blogs and movies have been dedicated to ramen than any other noodle dish in Asia. No wonder: Ramen’s intoxicating combination of fat and salt sends powerful messages directly to the endorphin-producing parts of the brain.